Openote

Your notes. Your format. Every platform.

An open-source alternative to Microsoft OneNote — a real freeform canvas, handwriting and maths, and a documented file format that stays readable whether or not this project does.

Windows · macOS · Linux No account Notes stay on your machine

Usable today, still under active development. Openote is still receiving major updates, and an update may break a feature until the next one fixes it. It is developed on Windows, tested on Linux now and then, and largely untested on macOS. Your notes stay on your own machine in an open, documented format either way — so nothing is ever locked in.

Download

Finding the latest release…

Windows

An installer with the usual wizard. Installs for your user only, so it never asks for an administrator password.

Download for Windows

macOS

A universal disk image — Apple Silicon and Intel. Open it and drag Openote to Applications. Honestly: this is the least-tested build — tell us what breaks.

Download for macOS

Linux

A package your system installs, so Openote lands in your applications menu — .deb for Ubuntu, Debian and Mint, .rpm for Fedora and openSUSE.

Download for Linux

Your operating system will warn you. Here's the honest reason.

Openote isn't code-signed. Certificates cost a few hundred dollars a year per platform, and while the project is this young that money buys nothing you'd notice. The warnings don't mean the software is unsafe — only that we haven't paid to tell your OS who we are. Every download here is built by a public workflow from a tagged commit, and you can read both.

Windows — “Windows protected your PC”

Click More info, then Run anyway. SmartScreen shows this for any installer it hasn't seen often enough to have an opinion about.

macOS — “openote is damaged and can't be opened”

macOS quarantines unsigned downloads. Copy Openote to Applications, then run this once in Terminal:

xattr -cr /Applications/openote.app

Or open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to Openote.

Linux — nothing to do

Double-click the package your system uses and it installs like any other program — Openote then appears in your applications menu. From a terminal instead, if you prefer:

sudo apt install ./openote-*-linux-amd64.deb   # Ubuntu, Debian, Mint
sudo dnf install ./openote-*-linux-x86_64.rpm  # Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE

On a distro that uses neither, take the .tar.gz: extract it anywhere and run ./openote inside. No install, no root, no menu entry.

What it does

Early, but real — and honest about which parts are which.